Toddler's Battle Is Over

2-year-old Dies Of Leukemia

December 29, 1993|By MATHEW PAUST Daily Press

GLOUCESTER — The only thing harsher than the freezing rain that whipped across the cemetery of Olive Branch United Methodist Church in Gloucester County Tuesday was the death that had brought more than 100 mourners there.

They had gathered to say goodbye to a little boy who on Christmas Day lost a struggle with leukemia that lasted most of his 2+ years.

His name, as it appeared on the front of his funeral bulletin, was Thomas Montgomery Pike Fary II, but his family and friends just called him Pike.

"No more tears for Pike, Mommy. I reached the stars today. I don't want to see you hurt anymore, because I went away," reads the first stanza of a poem printed inside the bulletin. The poem was written by Susan Fary, Pike's aunt.

Pike was one of four children of Sarah and William "Scooter" Fary Jr.

Many folks in the community had been pulling for the boy, said Milton Early, chairman of the Gloucester Chapter of the American Red Cross. He said 145 people showed up to donate blood for Pike one day in September during a special visit by the Red Cross Bloodmobile.

"He had a lot of friends," Early said.

Pike's leukemia was an on-again, off-again battle that started when he was 8 months old. After treatment the disease went into remission for about a year.

When it flared anew this spring, doctors at the University of Minnesota Hospital tried a treatment that was about as old as Pike, called a stem cell transplant. It consisted of injections of material from the placenta of Pike's younger brother, Tyler. The placenta had been preserved after Tyler's birth last year.

After that treatment, Pike's condition began to improve.

"He's doing beautifully," his grandmother, Tommie Fary, said in September.

Then, about three weeks ago during routine blood tests at Medical College of Virginia, the cancer cells were found again, said the Rev. Ken Faulkner, an MCV chaplain who befriended Pike and his family.

"It meant that a full-blown relapse had taken place," said Faulkner, who added that at that point, following a stem cell transplant, there really was nothing more that could be done to fight the disease.

This presents an especially painful dilemma for families of child victims, he said, because of the need to choose between continuing treatment, against heavy odds, or letting the child die at home.

To continue the treatment, which involves more suffering for the child, in most cases "ultimately proves pointless," he said.

Pike's parents decided to bring him home, said Faulkner.

"It took a lot of courage and strength, as well as a lot of insight on their part, to let him enjoy his remaining days without putting him through more burdensome hospital treatment," he said.

The chaplain described Pike as a good kid. "For all he'd been through, he was remarkably good-natured," he said.

At the grave, Pike's tiny casket was lowered into the ground as the Rev. Willie B. Guill Jr. offered prayers. After the brief ceremony, some family members, who had remained stoic, began to sob as they trudged through the sleet to a line of waiting cars.